


so walking up your road I came, to remind you how it used to be

by handschuhmaus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cows, Dark Dramedy, Fake Character Death, Faked Suicide, Fix-It of Sorts, Harry Potter was Adopted by Other(s), Misguided Albus Dumbledore, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Tom Riddle | Voldemort Adopts Harry Potter, as in Drama and Comedy, but also hopeful, but only in the magical equivalent more or less of 'on paper', the long slow decline of the Gaunt family (as reversed in the 1980s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-01-29 05:23:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21404890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: Harry Potter was supposed to live with his grandparents, which was the executive decision of his Grandfather Potter. Would that he hadn't hurriedly dropped the kid off with Eileen Prince's newly sober Muggle husband (who is about to receive a telephone call from a Gaunt) instead of the Evanses!It takes a village to raise a child. Sometimes that's your grandparents, the family of your mother's childhood best friend, and the aunts and grandmothers of the dark lord who accidentally adopted you.And if the price of the war is the death of its darling couple, that was probably fine, but Dumbledore really never bargained on its demanding their abrupt and unannounced relocation to some forest.
Kudos: 6





	so walking up your road I came, to remind you how it used to be

**Author's Note:**

> this began life provisionally titled "slipped stitches", and its present title, from bouncing thematically via "I've Been Slipping" (Over the Rhine), is a line from "Jackie" by This Is Deer Country. (who were an excellent if surely obscure band, when they were together)
> 
> The sort of fic this is may also be suggested by the fact that in the future it may contain someone cosplaying David Hilbert.

_Shame they live in such dismal surroundings_, thought Lord Potter. But it was the only way. James and his little Mudblood had faked their death, just as he had, so the Muggle grandparents were the only ones for it. 

"What-?!" exclaimed the man who opened the door, looking sleepless. 

"I can't stay to explain," he answered. "You must look after him."

"You're--leaving a baby with...?" the man didn't formulate his question properly.

"Family is the best thing!" said Lord Potter, and with only the briefest of checks that more Muggles weren't watching, apperated away.

* * *

The man--the wizard, had left the child on the doorstep! At least he had rung the doorbell and had someone standing there for the answer, no matter his nonsense about family (_Surely_ Sev would have the courtesy to send better notice if it was his doing.), but he had no supplies and was in no state to care for a child.

On the other hand, it was rather too late to take the kid anywhere, and he had bought milk just yesterday--that would probably do for the night, wouldn't it? He had no sooner picked the infant up than the phone rang, insistently. 

"Hello?" He answered it gruffly, the child in one arm. Who would be calling him at this hour?

"Could I speak to Eileen?" He couldn't place the accent, although it wasn't too far off from Queen's English. It had to be a wizard, or rather, a witch, in which case he had some quite bad news. 

"She isn't at this addr--" he left off suddenly, at a loud snap and the appearance in the hallway not two meters from him--speak of the devil!--of what could only be Eileen Prince Snape. 

"Who's this?" she asked, a confused look coming to her face.

"You're wanted on the phone," Tobias said, shrugging in answer at the same time.

She took the receiver. "Hello.--I only just got home.--Wait, WHO?!--" there was a longer pause, and then, again. "Hello. -- Why did you grace us with your presence?--You think THAT happened? But why didn't he...? Oh, because--presumed squibs, I see.--There was a raid on the Potters and scuttlebutt has it he didn't come out well. Nice talking to you.--Aunt--Yes, I suppose I could pop round, under the circumstances. After I sort this out.--Ciao."

"There'll be a long explanation in the morning," Eileen informed him, hanging up the receiver.

"Well, that's good. I haven't got one; the fellow didn't give me one, when he left the kid here."

"...what sort of 'fellow' was he?" she looked at the baby carefully, taking in the green eyes and the full head of black hair. Sharing in her survey, Toby revised his estimate of the infant's age. "I wonder if--he's got the Potter hair, and Miss Evans' eyes--could he have mistaken us for Harold and Rose?"

"I wouldn't know. Certainly a wizard, I'd say. Showed up quarter after midnight, hardly said ten words!"

Eileen sighed. "I'm meant to pay a visit now--yes, I know the hour is absurd. Do you think you can handle him for a few hours, and we'll check with Rose in the morning?"

"Harold Evans is probably up. They had him on second shift last I heard."

"At our age?" Eileen's brow rose, despite her own proposed errand. 

"Yeah. I'll see if there's a light on."

His erstwhile wife frowned, looking thoughtful, then nodded. "I should be back within, oh, an hour."

* * *

Eileen concentrated, hoping that she remembered the Apparition point in Manchester well enough to get there safely, not having been there in many years. 

There were many people crowded about the alleyway that was the city wizarding district, but they were caught up in celebration (She thought it was too soon to say they were safe, but no one had asked her.) She didn't want to be there, anyway, but two blocks over. Considering the hour, she cast Notice-Me-Not before beginning the walk.

The house was a warm, pale yellow, a shade darker than butter, and there were lights on in the living room.

"You'll be another one of Grandmum's guests," said the teenager at the door, ducking back to what she thought was the basement steps and pressing a button on ...a portable radio? She hadn't kept up with technology in five years, and hadn't been so current, then. 

"Eileen!" There was still a little red, she noticed, in the gray hair of the woman who greeted her, and then wrapped her in an embrace. "Come in!"

"I'm going to bed," said the teenager.

"Yes, of course, Nes," said Thrascia Neal née Gaunt. "Do you want scotch? We've been having some."

Eileen did give it a moment's consideration, but shook her head. She hadn't really ever gotten the taste for whisky, and with Tobias's alcohol problems, it was probably better not. 

"Too good to drink with us snakes, eh?" said a voice she didn't know.

Thrascia giggled. "I haven't ever drank with Mother, before."

"And you're the one who married a Muggle, yeah?" Eileen knew exactly who this was, and had even spoke with her on the phone(!) earlier, but nothing could have prepared her to meet the peer-of-Dumbledore head-by-default of the essentially defunct Gaunt family, especially here, in the house of her daughter of whom her question was also an accurate statement. Mortola sounded resentful, but not with quite the same haughtiness as with Amelnda Prince, recently or ever.

"...yes," Eileen finally assented. "What brought you out of seclusion?"

"Alec has a bad cold, and we were out of chamomile and pocket change to get it," she explained, proud and brusque. A thoroughly mundane explanation, then. Bizarre.

"You know you could have gotten chamomile at a Muggle shop. It's a common tea." And an unusual potion ingredient, and evidently she couldn't resist baiting the old pureblood. 

"Not without money. I have a few investments that cover most orders, but--I suppose it's the war--" she sounded oddly dejected "they're doing less well these days."

"I'd imagine it is, if it's through Gringotts," Thrascia put in.

"Hmph. I'd figured things were plummeting over the _disagreement_, internationally. " But this sounded like a point of contention.

Nevertheless, Eileen provided, "I've been staying with Amelnda, and Edwin said his associates had had assets frozen, and that business was reluctant."

"This going to be the end of the wizarding world?" was Mortola's aside to her daughter, and then "Really. Amelnda? I thought you'd be ...better than that."

It was not really an explanation, but Eileen informed them, "Edwin is in St. Mungo's--he went to a ...demonstration at the ministry, and got hit with some esoteric spell combination, they said."

Thrascia pointed her to a rose print sofa. "Do sit down and let me get you some tea, at least. How is Briar?"

"Dead."

Her honorary aunt couldn't avoid a dramatic intake of breath. "I hadn't figured he'd fight in the war; he didn't seem like the sort."

Briar was her only paternal cousin, two years younger, and had went mostly to Beauxbatons, on Amelnda's insistence. "Edwin and Amelnda couldn't abide his predilections, or the Muggleborn girl. Briar felt that taking his own life was better than being forced to take that of others in the war." Thrascia frowned, looking dismayed.

This time it was Mortola who exhaled raggedly. "We haven't even taken the Prophet in over a decade. I had no idea."

Strange, that the Gaunts wouldn't be keeping up with the news. She felt she just had to pry, into whether it was an ideological debate. "Over a decade? What prompted that?"

Mortola smirked, and affected an American accent "'That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.'" 

Eileen's jaw dropped. Even though she was here, in a Muggle house, ignorant of the war, a Gaunt (who wasn't dear old Aunt Thrascia) commenting on the moon landing?!

"Little girl came knocking one day--trying to sell newspaper subscriptions to keep her family fed, and Alec--and I--couldn't resist, even though it meant barter in eggs and veg. And she couldn't go off to Hogwarts, so I got Keel to arrange distance courses."

"...Keel?" Eileen asked, for Mortola seemed to think she would know who this was.

"She's your ...great-aunt, half, anyway. Your great-grandfather had an affair with some Ravenclaw girl shortly before your father was born. She wasn't good enough for Amelnda and...Aquila and Ephineas had other disagreements," Mortola explained, which was a funny and near irrelevant bombshell to come at the possible close of the war. 

Eileen didn't have to ask; Thrascia did. "Other disagreements like what?"

"Oh, well, marrying someone who spoke German, even as badly as I do, would have been unthinkable for Keel. At least then."

"Is she like Amelnda, then?" Eileen asked warily.

"Ha!" Mortola Gaunt scoffed. "In disposition towards Muggleborns they're like as two peas, Keel and Ephineas. The problem was your father liked the intellectual life of the continent, with some love for Arithmancy, and Aquila in her youth would denounce them unequivocally as Huns; but she could have gone on and on about Sanskrit and such like, but--"

"Ephineas never quite liked the question of the raj. He told me once he couldn't even bring himself to wholeheartedly get behind Gandhi," Thrascia filled in, and before she could say more the Floo flared, and Eileen started, the green flames somehow incongruous in a for all intents and purposes Muggle house. 

In quick succession, the fireplace spat out two different couples (one pair in their nightclothes, one dressed in everyday and Mugglish clothes and bearing a bottle of ...something that looked alcoholic); a woman who looked as if she might be related to Thrascia and Mortola, and a man sneezing into a large, worn handkerchief. 

"Let me get you a hot drink!" said the man with the bottle and went over to Thrascia's whiskey and teapot, quickly making a hot toddy. Their hostess summoned a jar of honey and he put in a generous spoonful-worth, with the casual gesture of a practiced potioneer.

"Jo came over and is watching Clementine," the ailing man said to the three of them who were already there.

"Father, please, sit down!" Thrascia ushered him to a recliner and the man handed over the hot toddy.

"I'm fine," he protested, "it's just a bad cold."

"Hmph. I'll get you a potion for it before I leave," said Eileen's mother, who was the woman in the pajamas it took a moment for her to recognize. They hadn't seen each other in...many years.

"Mr. Gaunt, ...Mrs. Gaunt," Ephineas Prince said effusively, as he surveyed the other guests.

"Just Alec, ...Ephineas?" protested Thrascia's father.

At nearly the same time, Thrascia's other likely relative and the black haired man, the one who had presumed to fix Alec Gaunt a drink, both spoke.

"I don't think anyone likes being called Mrs. Gaunt anymore," she said wryly.

While he exclaimed "Thrascia, Bella, Ephineas! ...Eileen?" And threw his arms around Thrascia.

Before anyone else could say anything, Bella Prince had embraced the two of them as well, and Ephineas joined them with only slightly more hesitance.

"Clementine is a cow," Mortola explained, looking curiously at her husband, her daughter and the Princes, and the man who must be Eileen's long-lost maternal uncle. 

"Who is due to give birth soon," Alec Gaunt added, through a stuffy nose. Eileen recalled relations between Thrascia and most of her family being sour, fraught, but her honorary aunt had never really said anything negative of her father. As she understood it, Alec was younger and perhaps (of course such things were never discussed) slightly less "pure of blood." "Do you know they made a disease cure from spoiled toast?"

"What in Salazar's name are you going on about? And why are you keeping a cow now, Father?" said not-Mrs. Gaunt (who, Eileen supposed, must then be Thrascia's older sister, whose name she didn't remember), while the other Princes and Thrascia proceeded apace with their reunion, sharing quiet remarks.

He answers her kindly. "Because it'll help Jo's family to have the milk. You know we would, definitely, have helped you, if you'd said anything, Merlela." So that must be her name.

Merlela scoffed, but, with a scathing glance at Eileen, perched on the sofa beside her. "Marvolo--and Hiram--wouldn't have stood for it. And what do you mean, spoiled toast?"

"Some medicament for animals, I'd suppose," Mortola threw in off-handedly. "He's been reading about some veterinary." It was an odd phrasing, saying 'medicament', and aside from that, she had to marvel that the Gaunts, beyond Thrascia, had come into the Muggle twentieth century sufficient to go discussing penicillin (she presumed, although she hadn't heard _toast_, per se) and the American moon landing.

"Oh--" Eileen's mother interjected "he said he broke his arm two days ago, helping my great-niece with a spell she's developing." Who "he" was, or how he'd come up wasn't clear.

"Ach. Wish him well for me, then, Alex--Rowena knows I've wished him ill often enough." That then, from Mortola (invoking someone other than Salazar!), was towards Eileen's uncle and must be intended for someone on that side of the family, perhaps her maternal grandfather? She was barely aware he had been acquainted with the Gaunts, on some strange pretext. Of course, Bella's (and Alex's) family had a long history of being more courteous to Muggleborns than was the Gaunt principal, which could explain the ill wishes...

But as surprisingly nice of an odd reunion this was proving to be (and the rest--if that was the right word--of the decent British wizarding world, to judge by the rumors, would go on celebrating, heedless of the time) she had promised Tobias an hour, and squandered some twenty minutes already (though the return would be easier, as she could readily apparate into her own house--had just done.)

Eileen addressed the room, despite having come on the strength of that strange phone call (speaking to Mortola Gaunt on the phone!) "Forgive me, I have to get back home by half-past, but what are we celebrating, exactly?"

"I'd call it as much strategizing," said Mortola, in a cold voice, and knocked back the centimeter of scotch remaining in her glass.

* * *

There were lights on in the Evans house, and the flicker of TV through the translucent curtains in the living room. So Tobias Snape, infant in arm, knocked despite the hour. 

Perhaps a few minutes ticked past before Harold "Harry" Evans irritably opened the door. "What the devil? Is this bad news about Lily?" the neighbor retorted, before he had even recognized Toby in the dark. "Tobias Snape? What in seven hells are you doing here, with a baby?"

"I wish," said the witch's husband, with a wryness that ran in the family, "I'd been able to ask that of the man, wizard probably, who left this one for me. Eileen thought the kid looks like your Lily's husband, I guess, but she had some sort of magic business. Tonight. I mean--visiting someone, not dancing around in the moonlight."

"Harold, what's going on?" Rose's graying hair was in curlers and she was wearing a bathrobe over presumably whatever it was she wore to bed, which left too much of her legs exposed for the just-turned-November chill. "Is that Harry?! What's he doing with you... Mr. Snape?"

"Damned if I know. Some wizard" (he knew Lily was also a witch, so there was no harm in mentioning such things) "abandoned him with me, wouldn't stay to explain anything. Woke me up, too. Eileen thought maybe he'd mistaken the address."

Rose Evans's face went grey. "You'd better bring him in. I have a few clothes and things I was going to give to Lily. But no formula..." She fixed him with a grim look. "There's something I'd better explain, and I wouldn't share it with you if it weren't for Eileen and Severus."

Tobias admitted, "I have some milk I was going to give him tonight.. He looks like he might be old enough for oatmeal or something, too."

"There's that rice pudding Petunia used to love, and you brought home a jar of applesauce last week, for a low-fat cake or something," Harold mused. They were strangely united now, in trying to care for the small child--Harry.

Tobias stepped in and followed the Evanses to their kitchen table. If he'd ever entered their house before, he didn't remember it, but Sev had been a frequent visitor, friends as he was with Lily, and Eileen had called on the Evanses a few times over the years.

Rose exhaled hard. "He probably couldn't find our house, though it's surprising he even thinks we're still alive," she admitted, tersely.

"I think you'd better explain that," Tobias prompted, because he really didn't understand. He lay the swaddled bundle that was probably Harry Evans--err, no, what was that boy's name, that Lily had married and ...Sev had hated?--safely on the kitchen table.

"And I'd better go find this one a diaper, I think," Harold said, in a very fatherly voice, such as Tobias had never bothered about, and picked up Harry in an easier grip, more proof of a parental streak.

"We were attacked, once already. They don't like Lily and James," Rose said. "So Lily had the idea to fake our deaths to the wizarding world, and hide us very strictly from the eyes of magic. Though probably it wouldn't affect Eileen, she said--she knows us well enough. They're in hiding, too, and--" she blanched, suddenly folding in on herself, "--if Harry's here, something has probably gone very wrong. They may be... dead."

* * *

Severus Snape had hidden in the bushes--the Fidelius was down and the house had blast damage--only because he heard (and saw a flash as) someone apparate away, and he would wait until he could be assured of some privacy to go maudlin over Lily's ...corpse (he stumbled on that phrase even in his head) and firmly squelch the hope that rose unbidden, that she, and maybe the kid, could have survived. (He couldn't bring himself to think so positively about James Potter.)

And then, of all things, Hagrid showed up, on some sort of motorbike, and managed to notice him. "Hullo, Snape," he said, kindly enough. Bizarre, that the half-giant of all people should buy into Dumbledore's reassurances that Severus Snape was not entirely a bad apple.

"You--" Severus found he couldn't say anything further--it wasn't really a confrontation, but he couldn't decide whether it would have been a question or a sad and envious statement. 

"Dumbledore sent me ta get young Harry."

"Oh." He couldn't work out why there were already so many claims that Lily's baby had defeated the Dark Lord. Perhaps it was a scheme of Dumbledore's. And perhaps it was also related to the admittedly strained wartime monitoring instituted last month for the unforgivables, and the Dark Lord's rambling plans, in a spate of paranoia, to revive a dark curse developed in the late days of Grindlewald--the journals said it banished victims to hell, but whether euphemism or question of belief, the present Dark Lord had floridly described it as victims being "dispatched to the underworld."

Whatever it was, it killed, while being obscure enough to escape Ministry notice thus far... Not that the Ministry of Magic was steadfast against the Death Eaters, but the DMLE did prefer to make token gestures against murder. At least presently.

Severus wondered whether that would hurt less or more than Avada Kedavra and its cold green light--not that anyone actually knew how the killing curse felt...unless they were right, now, about the baby, who couldn't tell them anyway.

His mind was wandering. "I know ye liked Lily. Like a sister she was, yeh?" Hagrid asked, at a very low rumble.

Severus merely nodded (the description was close enough, especially considering Petunia), his voice failing him despite all the horrors he had witnessed elsewhere the past three years. 

They didn't find anyone in the house, only what had probably to be James's wand, cracked as if someone had stepped on it. No one. No corpses, not even Lily's, and no baby that Hagrid had come for. No dead Dark Lord either--that was rather too much (and inadmissably risky for Severus Snape) to hope for.

He felt like throwing up, somehow, and as if twice or three times over he was being made to personally understand the concept of "heartbreak". He felt sobs welling up, but could not presently break his stoic expression. Hagrid, however, was openly crying, with a handkerchief that could have been a meter square, and clapped Severus on the back surprisingly gently.

"They were such a good little family, they were," Hagrid said through tears and sniffles. _And I got them all killed,_ Severus's treacherous brain filled in.

* * *

Someone awoke in a shack in Little Hangleton where no person deserved to be; it would have been immediately condemned as a human residence by any but the most misanthropic of building inspectors. The sheets the man was lying on were mildewed, a layer of leaves and leaf mould covered the decaying wooden floor, having blown in under the equally rotting door.

He looked around and shivered in the cold. Something told him (he couldn't think very clearly either, even if he could express disgust at the view of his surroundings) there was something important under the floorboards, but he could not have said what it was.

* * *

Napoleon Mazzim made a notation in the notebook he had lying next to the (very Dark) tome he was reading. He'd had to get it from restricted archives, thanks to Grindlewald's antics, and he was writing with his non-dominant left hand thanks to the spell accident (unforseen extent of ice, it said in Safrona's journal). Which fact made him think of Mortola's Alec, who was, by obligation, now practically ambidextrous despite naturally being left handed. And they had associated that with being sinister, so much the word sunk in...!

But not very many people could have made the notation he had made, because not many people would both bother to read about such a procedure, and be well versed in literature of the early 20s recounting some bloody adoption rituals by royalist emigres fleeing the revolution. Something about making their Motherland bound to their Father the tsar--except that it was all very idealistic, not applicable in the most developed form to entire nations... Clio and he had idlly speculated about the reverse (and yet much the same), about turning a land against its presumed ruler, during the late 30s, but they never took to the spell development.

Albus Dumbledore, for instance, was unlikely to remark that the natural adaptations, should one take a notion to trying to make a human being a horcrux (also, by most logic, a ridiculous idea, and certainly not workable for reciprocal immortality, either), would probably entangle the magic with this blood adoption framework.

He wondered whether any of the relics England's dark lord sought had similarly conflicting magics, and then he put down his fountain pen and rubbed his aching arm in the cast. Skelegrow was somewhat contraindicated in the elderly, and what with recruitment reaching onto the continent and potioneers and herbologists fleeing to far-flung lands, they were husbanding ingredients cautiously, lest things in Britain get any closer to catastrophe. But pain potion was a matter of Muggle grocery ingredients and common trees, so he would still take a bit of it. It was past two and time for bed.

* * *

James Potter, the few times he had imagined an afterlife of either the heavenly or hellish variety, had never figured on the denseness of pine trees. Or pine trees at all. Weird, that, but unmistakable. Maybe this was some intermediary stop--hadn't someone spread the rumor that the invisibility cloak he inherited was one of the Hallows that made one a Master of Death? Certainly Voldemort had killed him.

There was a crunching noise, as if someone (and James wasn't moving) had stepped on a twig, and also a slithery sort of noise as made by pine needles someone is walking over. "James!" Lily's voice hissed. "Harry!"

"O, tempting demon that borrows my wife's voice--" James began grandly, because why would Lily be in a pine tree sort of afterlife?

"I _am_ your wife, you git. Why do you think we were banished here? And where's Harry?"

"I thought this was the afterlife," James explained sheepishly.

"Where Harry isn't," Lily retorted, and then frowned. "I'm not thinking straight. Probably the best guess for how we got here is a malicious portkey, but I don't remember touching anything unusual or with you, and we've been dumped here together..."


End file.
